1. Field of the Invention
This invention relates to food processing equipment and more particularly to a novel wrapping apparatus for placing paper about a food product which includes a mechanical program means for sequentially operating a variety of mechanical and electrical components.
2. Description of the Prior Art
In the past, food products such as tortillas, for example, have been packaged by hand. The usual steps involved comprise stacking the tortillas in quantities of 12 and then hand wrapping each stack in a sheet of paper so that the tortillas may be further processed and shelf-life may be extended.
Obviously, hand packaging of such a food product is time consuming and expensive. Production yield of the food product is limited and manual or hand handling of the food product packaging leads to errors and product waste. Some attempts have been made to mechanise the packaging procedure which, for example, count the number of tortillas and arrange a predetermined number in a stack while other devices partially wrap paper around a stack of tortillas followed by hand operation for sealing and transporting the packaged product for further processing. However, these prior attempts do not completely avoid manual handling or processing and no apparent attempt has been made to provide a machine for completely accepting a stack of pre-counted food products such as a stack of tortillas and completely wrapping including sealing the package without manual steps or manual handling of the product between operations.
Therefore, a long-standing need exists to provide a food processing apparatus or packaging equipment that will completely wrap and seal a package of food products without manual operation. Such equipment should provide for automatic operation and the various functions of the machine should have programmed sequences so that manual control of the machine is not necessary.